Triple Click - Video Games And Comedy

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

There's nothing funnier than dissecting comedy, right? This week, Kirk, Jason, and Maddy talk about humor in video games, from Monkey Island to Dark Souls. They talk about what kind of games are funny, why they're funny, and the role that social media plays in the grand comedy equation. Plus: why "YOU DIED" is such a good punchline.One More Thing: Kirk: DetectoristsMaddy: Hey Arnold!Jason: The MenuLinks:Triple Click Live at the Bellhouse!!!  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/triple-click-live-tickets-513213584647Heavy Rain “Press X to Shaun” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEK5VxDMMjoKirk’s review of Octodad: Dadliest Catch: https://kotaku.com/octodad-dadliest-catch-the-kotaku-review-1512040710“Octodad” by Ian McKinneySupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Hello everyone. Kirk here with a quick announcement before this week's episode. This May, Triple Click is going to be doing our first ever live show. It's going to be Thursday, May 18th at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York. We're going to have more info about it next week on the show. But for now, I just wanted to let you all know about it in case you want to pre-order tickets or get it on your calendars. There's a link to the event page in the show notes if you want some more information. But yeah, May 18th at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York. Our first ever live show, we're super psyched. All right, on with the show. They say the comedy is tragedy plus time. So don't worry that Dark Souls boss just killed you. It'll be funny in a few hours. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. Today, we are talking about humor in video games.

From Monkey Island and Day of the Tenticle to the Stanley Parable and a little bit of Eldon Ring. I'm Jason Shire. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hello. It's us again. It is us once again.

Back. Back again. Back again. Back again. It's 2023. We're here. That's true. It's January.

The year is almost over. You know, it's been an exhausting year, you know? There's that roller coaster feeling or like a log flume ride or whatever, where you're kind of the first week of a new year. like, oh man, it's a new year. It's super chill. Then the second week hits and I realize that I'm going to like close my eyes and open them and it's going to be like June. I just already have that feeling that time is

we need to rush forward. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. But if you like listening to this podcast, if you want to close your eyes, listen to triple click and then suddenly it'll be June, you should help us make triple click possible by becoming a supporter. Go to maximum fun.org slash join and you can help us make this show because we are entirely supported by listeners. We do not have ads.

We can only do this. We can only keep Kirk eaten burritos by getting. By being funded by lovely, lovely members of Maximum Fun on our network. So we really appreciate you. And hey, not only do you get to keep the show possible by subscribing. You also get bonus episodes every single month. We just recorded a bonus episode for December a few weeks ago where we talked about Andor, Star Wars Andor. And we'll have another slate of bonus episodes for everybody throughout 2023.

So once again, maximum vote.org slash join sign up today. And one more quick thing. Last week we aired the predictions episode, always a listener favorite, always a topic of lots of hot discussion. one quick supplemental note on my predictions is I made a prediction that this year we will get three Final Fantasy games. Kirk just did a Skype emoji as we're all talking. I added a bunch of hearts. I was just trying to make it go away, but then I wound up realizing this is appropriate. This is how I feel about Jason updating his predictions.

You heart it. I love it. So on the predictions list, which we probably won't talk about again for a while. a while. But on the prediction list, I did a prediction saying we will get at least three new Final Fantasy games, not counting spin-offs. One supplement to that is that theater rhythm, the rhythm game that was announced for February, does not count. And the reason it does not count is because I forgot it existed. I forgot that it was a Final Fantasy game. So that does not count. Otherwise, or we could just say four games, but I think for simplicity, we'll just say

That does not count. On with the show. Maddie, what are we talking about today? We're talking about humor in video games. And we're going to get really serious about it. No jokes this episode, folks. We're just going to drill down rule of threes. Yes, and. We're talking theory.

We're talking technique. We're talking comedy theory. We're going to talk about. No, I don't. You're laughing. I'm laughing because I'm nervous. You can't even take that seriously. Because even putting together the outline for this episode, I was like, do I know enough about comedy to say why I think some games are funny and other games aren't funny?

Because it's so subjective. I don't think you need to know enough about comedy. I mean, do you need to know a lot about food to be like, this tastes bad and this tastes good? No. You can have a lot about video games to make a video game podcast. I'd be like, this game is good. No. You didn't know anything.

I don't know anything about anything. And on that note, I, do you do you do? you feel like this is a truism? I feel like people say this less now, but when I was starting out writing about games, I remember people saying video games are almost never funny. And whenever they try to be, it doesn't work. And I think that changed around the time portal came out. And now I almost never hear people say that video games aren't funny. But before that, I think because a lot of the other funny video games that I was trying to think of from the olden days were, well, I got Duke Nukem, hilarious, wall to wall, funniest, funniest shit I can possibly think of.

Leisure suit, Larry, come on. The comedy never stops. He wants to have sex. He wants to have sex. What could be funnier? What's funnier than that? So I think that's part of why, but also when I think about the modern things that make a video game funny, I think about people talking a lot, dialogue. So I think of the post portal era.

So we've talked about Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. We talked about even God of War Ragnarok, not a comedy game, but certainly there's some funny bits in there thanks to NPC dialogue. Borderlands games, I would say you have too many quips now, but they're certainly famous for being quippy. Well, hold on. Hold on. I want to address your question. All right, Jason. What are your thought? Do you think that video games did not used to be funny and now they are?

Or do you think that's a false dichotomy? No, well, that's not the question. The question is, do you still see people saying that video and games can't be funny? That's the question you originally asked. And that I want to address because I think there's a concrete answer to that. And it is, no, that conversation does not happen anymore. And that's because I think of social media. And social media has really changed the way that games are played and dissected and thought about. And even people like Kirk, who like doesn't use Twitter a lot often play games and are like, you know, that moment, I should snip that and put it on social. media. So let me explain my theory here, which is that, um, Dark Souls, hilarious video game. And one of the reasons it's hilarious is because you can have these ridiculous deaths and then share them online and, uh, you share them with your friends and everybody laughs and everybody thinks it's a very enjoyable, cathartic experience to laugh at it. Skyrim, hilarious video game. But way less funny if you were just like watching dragons like explode or turn into Thomas the Tanganshan or like silly glitches, like horses turn like on people's heads or whatever.

Way less funny if you were doing it by yourself, but because of social media, a lot more funny. And so I think we've gotten to this point where like so many games are memeable and those are the funniest kinds of games these days that like it's not really a conversation anymore. And a lot of the humor that we get from games, whether intentional or not, is just from those kind of viral snippets and moments and punchlines

that we can kind of, take away from them and share with people. Yeah, that's an interesting premise, you know, that it's funny because we are able to share the funny things that happen to us, which sort of implies that the games were always funny, but we now have a way to share the funniness of them with other people. With an audience. And I think that, well, and I think that it can also transform frustration into comedy, right? Like, so in the 80s, if you died to a boss and you just had like a sliver of health left

and you were frustrated about it, you just got mad. Now you can get mad and also share your like madness on the internet for people to laugh at. And that I think adds this a whole new element of comedy to games in general. And on Twitch and YouTube. I mean, you didn't even mention streaming, but that's also part of social media as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm talking about all of it.

YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, like Instagram, Snapchat, everything. TikTok. Yeah, I mean, I think this was true even, you know, a long time ago when you would be playing a game with your friends and everyone would see the ridiculous thing that happened. There's usually laughter and that kind of, that joke was there in those games as well, but people didn't maybe think of it as a style of humor. I would say, though, just sort of in addition to that,

that I do think that humor in games and comedy games have just become more sophisticated over the last 10 or 20 years, and that I think that games are just funnier now. I think there are more funny people making them, and that people have, you know, writers have figured out ways to be funny and uniquely video gamey ways that you just didn't see as much, you know, like 20, 30 years ago. Like the Secret of Monkey Island is a very funny game that we've talked about a lot of times. And it was a game that I loved as a kid.

And it was because it was honestly funny. Like Ron Gilbert is a funny guy. Tim Schaefer is a funny guy. They write funny jokes. And there are funny jokes in that game. And as a kid, I loved that. But it's pretty straightforward, mostly. Like it's, you know, humor and inventory-based.

The humor is inventory-based and largely dialogue, and rarely all that interactive, where now I think you see people doing more funny game design, where the actual design of the game is the thing that's funny. And I don't know whether that's, you know, it's not like a brand-new thing that's just started happening, but I do think I see more of it, and it's become more sophisticated. I could say some specific examples, but to throw that out there, I do think that games actually have gotten funnier. No, I agree. It's part of why I asked the question that way, because I think they have gotten funnier, but also in a lot of different directions.

One way is the Dark Souls direction that Jason's describing, which is that games have always had the opportunity for a situationally funny moment to arise just out of the sandbox of it all. And that doesn't mean that the game was designed to be funny. But Dark Souls games, from soft games over time and games that mimic them. have included more and more opportunity for that. And I think you're right, Jason, that social media aids in that. Like, the way that messages work in in Dark Souls and Eldon Ring, et cetera, allows for comedy. Like, you can have a message that's like, look up or whatever, and then something falls on your face or some warning that you don't understand until it's too late. And so the message is setting up a joke that another player has written for you, but then also the game might have made you laugh anyway because you were about to trip and fall into some unpredictable,

absurd, dangerous scenario that is slapstick, basically. And that is, I think, part of what makes games funny now is the performance aspect, but also that's funny even when I'm by myself, too. So that's a design thing. But also, Kirk, you're reminding me of another form of slapstick, which is just untitled goose game. I put Goat Simulator on my mental list as well. Games where the purpose is physical comedy, it's like a series of events and maybe not everyone will experience them in the same way. But there are many physical comedy bits that could unfold because of the way the world has been designed, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think that speaks very much to Kirk's point about games being designed more in a funny way and how it's less about the dialogue.

And there's still those games that's like stuff in the Marvel jokes and quips and they fly now stuff. But but I think that like Untitled Goose game is a perfect example of mechanical hilarity. Trombone Champ is another recent really good example. Yeah. Of that of a game that like could not work in any other medium. I think a good kind of rubric for this question is like would this work as a movie and would it not? And Trombone Champ. I mean, that couldn't be a movie.

But as a game, it's hilarious and extremely enjoyable. Same with Untitled Goose Game. Right. Yeah. I mean, untitled goose game, I probably would watch that movie. But as a game, it's... Untitled Goose movie. I mean, God, the goose would need, like, a real backstory and emotional, like, pathos for going

out there and wrecking havoc. That's one of those snakes on a plane type things where you could see someone deciding, okay, I have a spare $15 million I'm going to make this movie and us all being richer for it. And it just... Well, I don't know. I could see it being. a catastrophe also, Untitled Goose movie. So, yeah, I think there's sort of a difference between types of game humor that you participate

in, which is the type that we're talking about right now. The slapstick humor, which Dark Souls qualifies, I think, for sure, in an interesting way that maybe I'll circle back to if I can remember my train of thought. But just slapstick games like Trombone Champ, which I was going to bring up as well. I've guessed it on podcast lately where I've talked about Trombone Champ and have re-articulated my big observation about that game, that the fact is. that you play and the notes come out and you play badly is what makes the game so great and so funny. And it's that you're the moron up on stage trying to play trombone and falling and slipping

and then a banana peel and a pail goes over your head and it plays a Wilhelm scream and you fall and all of that. Like it's you're the one doing that. So in this kind of game, you have to be the butt of the joke, which I do think is a little bit of a tricky thing for games to pull off because it doesn't feel good to be the butt of the joke over and over and over again in a way where the game, it feels like the game is mocking you for not being able to do it. But if you change your expectations or the game builds a context around you that allows you to feel like you're supposed to be the butt of the joke

and that's okay, then suddenly it can become very pleasurable. Well, you just described souls. Yeah, dark souls. Yeah, that's the thing I'm going to circle back around to. Octodad is a really good example of this. Have either of you played Octodad? I know, I'm sure you're both aware of it. And I love the song. Nobody suspects a thing. It's so. catchy. Because they don't suspect a thing. I think I reviewed this for, I did review this for Kataku, and I believe I wrote a lot about video game humor in that review. And this is a game where you are playing an octopus who is pretending to be a human dad and a human family. And there are many jokes. And nobody suspects a thing. Because why would that? There are many jokes.

So there's a sort of narrative joke, which is that nobody suspects, like your whole thing is you're trying to blend in and not have anybody realize that you are an octopus. And you have to fit your eight tentacles into a human man's suit, like three-piece suit with a tie, and it's absurd for an octopus to do that. And you need to try to walk like a person. I mean, even that image, hopefully, is making the listener understand how hilarious this concept is. And it's funny just because you're watching it. And it's like, we were just watching Paddington. And in Paddington, there's kind of a running joke where everyone's like, oh, there's this bear saying with them.

And like everyone kind of remarks on it like it's remarkable, but no one really is like, yeah, there's a talking bear and it lives with this family. Like nobody really reacts quite on that level, which is just a running low-key funny thing. And that's true in Octodadette too. But then the slapstick of it is that, right, you have to go grocery shopping. And Octodot is impossible to control. So you're like moving the sticks. And it's just a fumble core, I think, is the name of the genre where you're like flopping your limbs around and they're sticking to everything and you're destroying the store and trying not to be spotted. by people. And so you're, again, failing in a really funny way. And in a way that, to your first

point, Jason, is really good for streaming and for sharing with people. Like, it's just when you show a true, spectacular fail in Octodad, it's very funny. And now to circle back around to Dark Souls, I did it. Yes. What's fun in those games is that they're not, it's not designed with the intention of Octodad. You are playing an epic fantasy adventure where you do want to beat the boss and you get those moments of drama and, you know, satisfaction where you finally win. But there's something in that game's tone that's distinct to Dark Souls, to the soul's world, where it's this super gritty, dark, serious thing. There's like this pounding orchestra, but also everything is a little weird.

And no one's really, people don't really talk a lot, so there's not a lot of context for what's happening. And then there are these rhythms of the game, the You Died screen that comes up when you die. Like it does start to feel, yeah, it feels like it's designed to be funny. And I've never, I don't think I've ever seen Miyazaki be like, yeah, straight up, we're trying to make this funny. But it does feel like there are the, the rhythms of comedy are there. You can feel them when you're playing that game. So, okay, I want to also, I don't want to give short shift here to the classic point in click adventure humor because I do think a lot of that stuff is also

humor that could only be in a video game. I mean, mechanical humor, um, Oftentimes, I think the best humor that comes from those games of Monkey Islands and days of the tentacle of the world is humor that comes from like figuring out a solution and being like, no, no, like it couldn't have been. It could be that. That's ridiculous. Like, in the tentacle, for example, when you have to like, you have to microwave a hamster essentially. Or you have to microwave like the sweater and then freeze the hamster with the sweater. It's a whole elaborate puzzle chain that it's just like, wait, you want. The game expects me to do one.

what? And there's so many silly, silly things that like, I think the fact that you, maybe you're not the butt of the joke as you are in the games like that you were talking about Kirk, but that you have to kind of come up with the joke. You're almost like the director of the game and you're kind of piecing together the joke yourself. I think that adds a whole new element to comedy. And Day the Tentacles is a good example because that's very much it's designed to feel like a Saturday morning cartoon. But instead of sitting there, and watching the cartoon characters like doing silly things, doing unrealistic things, you are kind of like conducting the orchestra and making it happen, which I think just adds

an interesting new element to it. So I kind of think, I mean, to answer your original question a little bit more, I kind of think that like that question was always kind of wrong. Like games were always capable of being pretty funny, going all the way back to like infocom text adventures and like Zork having ridiculous prompts if you try to do things that are like that you're not supposed to do or whatever or even just saying like you it is dark here you will be eaten by a grue

stuff that I think games have always just been really really funny and anyone who asked that question is kind of like I don't know coming out of from an ignorant place Right that is true that there was the heyday of like the early 90s was a very funny time in games

and Sierra Adventure games are very funny and games kind of did become less funny in the 2000s as things just became that kind of weird period there were just some fewer funny games and now we're seeing more comedy. Yeah, I think the problem in the early 2000s is more that the number of games we got

was very limited because the budgets were increasing. Adventure games were like totally out of style. Nobody could get an adventure game made. And we were at this point where like you, there were a lot of gatekeepers in the way of releasing a video game. You had to be at Best Buy. You had to go through a major publisher. And then Steam and Xbox Live Arcane

and like all this other stuff changed it and the rise of indie games. And so now since like the mid-2010s, We're back at this point where anyone can release a game, which means we're seeing that variety again. I do think there's a sort of, so there's a type of video game joke that works well because it plays with our understanding of games and our expectations. And it's the type of joke you're talking about, Jason, where you're a collaborator in the joke. And you maybe don't even realize that you are, but then the moment of delight or the moment of laughter is when you realize that you have been telling a joke with the assistance of the designers. And I think that that is different than the slapstick thing where you're fumbling around.

are failing and it's just funny. I have a couple examples. One is, I also wrote an article about this. In Destiny, I think it's in the first Destiny in one of the expansions, but maybe in Destiny 2, there's this sequence where you're walking around in a cave. Can you believe it? You're in a cave in Destiny. You're shooting enemies.

Wow. You come to a door. The door is locked and you have to go and get a tomb husk, which is this floating globe that's a little ways behind you. You have to get a floating orb in Destiny? And then guess what? You have to put it in the door, and the door opens. So you go to the door, the door is locked, and then Ghost is like, oh, we need a tomb husk to open this.

And then the little thing appears on your screen. You go back and you get the tomb husk and you open the door. Then you go through and you're like going through the level. You get to another door and the door is locked again. And then there's a bunch of dudes and you fight them. He's like, oh, we need another tomb husk. And then a thing pops up. And you go back and there's another tomb husk and you grab it.

And then you go and open the door. And then you walk through that door and then right in front of you is a tomb husk. It's just floating there. And you're like, well, and you pick it up. because you're like, well, yeah. And then Ghost is like, well, you know what they say. It's better to have a tomb husk and not need one than you need the tomb husk and not have one. And it really made me laugh because it was playing with video game design.

Like, it knew that I knew. Of course I'm going to need this tomb husk. It's the third door. Like there's always three doors. And it just, they wrote a little joke in a way that I thought was clever. One other example that I feel I should mention because it's one of my favorite video game jokes ever is in the tutorial for Portal 2, which I think is, is another, a great example of the beginning of an era where people were beginning to play with

this type of humor, which is when Wheatley, Stephen Mershant's robot, is talking to at the very, very beginning you're still in your hotel room or the room that you were staying in. And he's like, okay, great, I'm just checking it on you, making sure that you're okay. There's some things going on outside. Don't worry about it too much. We're just going to get you out of here. So first of all, I need to just, I need you to say, say Apple. And then it's like press spacebar to say Apple. And that appears on the screen. And you press that and you press that and you jump because space first jump right and he's like okay you jumped um that's not great but uh we're going to work with it and it's like that kind of joke i think is another one where like you're like

i don't think that space is going to like say apple i guess it's going to jump because i played 401 and i know how this works right and then you do it and then the joke happens and you it's delightful yeah so what you're describing there i think is like um the game either narrates or references to the actions that you're doing, which is a more recent trope, I think. I mean, it was certainly happening, it was a little bit more reactive back in the day where they would react to what you were doing in unexpected or funny ways.

But now it's like, or I guess it would react in kind of like, it would be a response to you rather than commentary as you're doing it. And nowadays it feels like it's a lot more common for a game to have some sort of narrator, like Portal or Stanley Parable.

Stanley Parable is the ultimate simplicity. A lot of stuff are bastion, even, which is an comedy game, it has some funny moments when you do something that the game doesn't, is like telling you to do elsewhere or something like, like telling you to go one way and the narrative will be like, and then he went the other way or something like that. I think that has become a really interesting, more modern trope that games have played around with the neat effect, although I think it definitely risks becoming overdone after a certain point. But yeah, it's the interesting kind of like meta, meta humor style.

Yeah, I feel like that is the exact problem with some of the games I can think of that haven't worked for me, which is when the characters comment too much on what is happening. And also the fourth wall breaking aspect of a game can be something that becomes very irritating if it happens too often. Like if a character, like Borderlands would be sort of my go-to for this, where if the characters refer too often to the fact that I'm in a video game and that they, themselves are embodying classic tropes or even stereotypes of characters, then at a certain point, I'm like, well, but why, though? Because I don't inherently think it's funny that you're

invoking a cliche and then telling me that you are. I need you to also do something further with that. But I understand why that's become so popular. It works so well on something like the Stanley Parable, which marries both the reactive thing where if you go the other way, the narrator will be like, why are you going that way? I told you not to do that. And you are playing with those boundaries, but also the fourth wall aspect where the game is constantly reminding you that you're playing a game and telling you that and having that be part of the bit. But maybe it's also just that the Stanley Parable is so short and it doesn't overstay.

It's welcome. Yeah, short doses. Have you played? There's a game called High on Life that just came out that. I don't know if any of us played. But from what I've seen and read of that, that game does that sort of meta humor the entire time, which I think some people liked and some people did not like. But I think it takes it to new levels. Like they're talking, the characters will talk about the bad level design as you're like walking through level and stuff like that.

You know, I haven't played it, but I have heard that that game lets you turn off some of the NPC constant chatter. And that alone makes me respect it more because I wish I. I could have done that in Guardians of the Galaxy, and there were certainly some moments, even in God of War Ragnarok, when I was like, I would just like to be alone with my thoughts, Mimir, for like 10 minutes. There was a name called Eat Lead, The Return of Matt Hazard. I just Googled it to remember it. It was starring Will Arnett as the main character.

I never really played it, but I've seen footage of this. And this is a game that is relentlessly doing the thing where it's like, wow, this level is really repetitive. Geez, another sewer level? God. And you're like actually suffering through another sewer level and kind of resenting the game for thinking that it's funny to point out that it's kind of a crappy game. Yeah. Which is another version of the sort of be careful what kind of jokes you tell in a game or what kind of jokes you make the player the butt of.

Because that can wear out its welcome quickly. Or make the game the butt of is actually how I would describe that particular joke. If you're making yourself the butt of the joke by being like, boy, this is badly designed. Do you really want the player to notice that? Right, but I would say that the way that it makes the player the butt of the joke is that the player is the one suffering through the shitty level. True, yeah. You're the one who has to spend the next hour of your life playing through this boring, repetitive level in a mediocre game. So the fact that the game is so pleased with itself for pointing out that it's crappy is like, you know, I don't know, is not very satisfying and actually kind of frustrating.

Another example of just a type of game that can be funny that we haven't mentioned yet is so I've always seen Super Smash Brothers as a comedy game in part because that's just how it was originally advertised. But especially now, because of the way that you can design levels as specialized, like you can have every party ball be filled with bees, for example. And that is just an inherent setup for comedy. But the joke is, as as Kirk would put in it, the joke is on every player who participates in the party balls full of bees level. Or the one that my friends and I were most into was items on high and every item is a Pokeball, which is also freaking absurd because then the challenge is just trying to play the game while there's like a thousand Pokemon on screen doing attacks. And you can't remember

which Pokemon are affiliated with you and which are affiliated with your enemies. And it's just, it's amazing. I don't know why. But I thought that was the funniest shit in the universe when I was in high school. And I'm not going to lie, I still think is pretty funny now. This is like golden eyes, slappers only. Yes. This type of humor, the type of humor that players can come up with on their own and that a good game designer can give them the tools for it, yeah, is definitely a super important type of video game humor because, you know, it can be very fun to be told a joke and to have, you know, a scripted joke in a scripted game, but, you know, people are always going to have the most fun delighting one another, being ridiculous with just

whatever toys happen to be at hand and whatever they can come up with. Yeah, and I mean, even games that, like, have no humor, whatsoever can have those moments where you're like um all right an example i'm thinking of is like if you're playing a match of starcraft too a game we will all be playing at some point this year you're playing a match of starcraft too and you are just like uh it's one-on-one you're just finding your business like farming your workers getting ready to set up and then suddenly you like pop into a corner of your base and you see like three cannons of the opponents and you're just like goddam and just like it's it's it's frustrating but also hilarious and the fact that like the game

is you're equipped to do something that just like surprises and can make your opponent laugh at the same time as they're super frustrated. I think it's always enjoyable. There's also a sort of there's the unintentional humor of the glitching video game, which I think is a crucial type of video game humor that is unique to games where, man, I've watched so many videos of heavy rain over the years. Has it been 12 years or something since that came out? But the video where you fail every single prompt in the grocery store is a perennial favorite of mine. Because it's incredible. I watched this recently. It's a donkey, video game donkey.

The famous YouTuber posted a video about Heavy Rain recently. It was him. He has a great laugh. And it's him laughing and laughing and laughing as he plays through that sequence. To describe to anyone, I'm sure people have seen this. But I think it's your playing as, I don't remember, you're Ethan. You're somebody. You chase somebody through a supermarket.

And then there's all these QTEs where you have to like dodge through the most hazardous supermarket. It's like all these items can fall on you and you like a leap over the ice chest covered in lobsters or whatever and fall over a bunch of oranges. It's insane. It's supposed to be stressful and it's supposed to be cinematic and it's like an exciting chase sequence through a supermarket. But if you purposefully fail, the motion capture. or like animated all of this stuff. So you're just watching this absolute series of pratfalls. This guy like,

oh, yeah, like runs onto the, onto all the tumbling apples and like slips and falls and like, it's flying around. And it just keeps going and going and going. I was crying, laughing,

watching that. And that's not even really a glitch, where there's also the glitch. Wait, I'm trying to remember. Is it, wait, Ethan is the main character.

What is it? He's yelling. Have you seen the glitch where he starts glitching? And he just yells his son's name? endlessly. It's not Jason because Jason he lost at the beginning of the game. It's the other one. Man, I might have to Google it so that I can remember. It's like, so there's a bug. I'll have to find this and link this in the show. My other memory, and this is like a very old idle thumbs bit, an old podcast. If folks remember the 2000s, they were just playing heavy rain really slowly and just like having even extraordinarily slowly like taking. where he's like tying his tie, but he won't tie it.

Like, just the fact that that game allows you, I mean, I think that's part of what we're describing as funny is when a game rewards you by allowing you to do something that you don't expect it to be able to let you do, which is make Ethan tie his tie so absurdly slowly that no human would ever do that. And so it becomes funny. Or just the number of things in Untitled Goose game that you can try where you're like, oh my God, they included an animation and a reaction for that. and an achievement for that, and you're rewarded just for having tried so many absurd things.

Okay, I think there is an important distinction, though, and that is part of what's funny about heavy rain is that the game is so self-serious and so trying to be artistic and meaningful, that when you play it, quote, unquote, wrong, it's funnier because it feels like you're putting your thumb in the eye of the people who made it a little. You're being like, yeah, okay, yeah, a serious story about a guy and his son, but I'm just going to, like, brush my teeth so slowly. And then the bug, which I now looked up, it is Sean, is the name as the Sean glitch. And he's just going, Sean, Sean, and then it's the whole climactic action sequence, which is this like wild chase across a roof where the killer's chasing you and you're hanging by a thread and pull up.

And the whole time, the character model is like glitching and his mouth is open. And he's going, Sean, Sean, just over and over and over again. I know who the killer is, Ethan. I can prove your innocence. congratulations Ethan you succeed you're the father that I have been looking for all these years

and it's absolutely amazing and that I think while the other type of humor we're talking about where they give you the tools to you know play it badly and be funny that's funny glitches like that are also really really funny like where it's a similar thing where it's totally undercutting the drama the attempt at like being cinematic and looking like a movie.

And instead, because it looks kind of realistic and looks like a movie, it would be like you're watching an outtake that could never happen of an action sequence where the protagonist is just weirdly yelling a name over and over. Right, like with the exact same tone of his voice, which it just winds up being this sort of surreal, broken, hilarious thing. Yeah. But again, I think it's the type of thing that just wouldn't be funny if not for social media Because, like, laughing alone in your room, you would kind of, like, get a mild amusement out of my suppose.

Well, it would be funny. It's just you can share it. I don't know. I don't know. I think that's the type of thing you need to be able to share with friends. And it's not quite the same when you're like, oh, man, Jason, you got to come over here and take the switch. Watch this guy tie his tie so slowly. I mean, Jason, I think where you're right is where something comes out like cyberpunk 2077 when it first launched, where I remember people I know who don't really play video games very often were like, it looks.

It looks so hilarious. I kind of want to check out this game, Maddie, because it looks so funny. And I had to explain to them like, no, if you were to check it out, it would just be broken and kind of unfod. Exactly. Exactly. But it looks so funny when you only see the clips of it glitching or breaking in some way that's absurd just for the length of a clip on Twitter. I think it's the same case with heavy rain where like if you were just by yourself playing it, I think that would be way less funny. it would be a little more frustrating.

Well, yeah, and it's just a distinction I'm drawing. I'm not saying that you're wrong exactly. It's like, it's kind of a philosophical question about the nature of comedy. I mean, what is, if you tell a joke by yourself, is it actually a joke? Like, where does the comedy actually happen? You need an audience. You need, you know, someone to hear the joke into experience. And it's kind of like anything.

But there is a kind of performative, well, there's a performative aspect to comedy, right? You can read jokes, and I guess it's kind of funny. But the real magic of a joke is in the telling of it. And in games, you get to participate in that. You get to participate with the game. So it can just be funny and you laugh to yourself. But right, like the fact that now that moment can have an audience or can be made even funnier by being pulled out and sort of crystallized, you know, into its absolute funniest elements

and then shared in a new format in a new medium, you know, on whatever, Twitter or something. And that makes it even funnier. Like that is really cool. That's a cool evolution in the way that video game humor can be received by an audience, which is an essential part of the humor overall. Yeah, I think it's like some films become called classics like The Room to the point where like you're like getting together with your friends and watching it. This is why I played Dante's Inferno last year. Well, I think with games it's so much more common just because of the nature of video games and how so many of them, to your point, Kirk, take themselves so seriously. Dante's Inferno including a lot of these.

A perfect example of a game that's so serious. That it's hilarious. And just sharing clips on social media or even I'm sure that like having a gamer night where you bring your friends over are. You all hang out on Discord and play them together. I mean, I had an audience. It was forcing Nico and Geeta to watch me play it. Just like, yeah.

I think that like in films they're called cult classics. I think they almost need like cult classic isn't even a good word for games because they happen so often that you would just have. constant cult classics. Like it's just constantly happening in games because games are so silly. Games are so absurd. The question I think isn't can games be funny and it's

can games be not funny? Because it's hard to find a game that like isn't funny in some way or another. They're also silly. Right. Yeah. And unintentionally so is what I'm talking about. Yeah. Even the word cult like cult classic cult, it implies the community element of that right? It's a thing that you appreciate with your cult of weirdos who all think that

the troll too is the greatest movie you're made and you watch it every year. And also if something is more serious, that invites the mockery even more. Like I'm thinking of the, do you two remember like Soldier Boy making fun of braid in the indie game, the movie?

Where he's like, oh man, this guy can go backwards and he just keeps doing it over and over again and laughing really hard at it. It's essentially like the idle thumbs guy's making Ethan put on his tie really slowly because it's just a game that has a mechanic that allows you to make a character her move in a way they wouldn't normally move.

And Jonathan Blow is just heartbroken by this moment because, of course, it's a very serious game and he didn't want it to be interacted with in that way. But, like, that's why I'm laughing, even thinking about the clip. Like, the clip itself is so funny to me because I'm just like, anything you make that's hyper serious, you have to accept the people will laugh at it because of just the idea of that. Maybe it's just human nature. Like, whatever response you want to get, you have to.

have to just accept that laughter is going to be one of those things. And it might be laughter at you, sorry. Well, or at least at the thing you made, at the version of you that exists in your work. I mean, and this is also true of David Cage and heavy rain. It helps when there's a sort of self-style tour behind the thing and then, you know, people can kind of take the piss. Yeah, Bioshock Infinite isn't funny enough, though. I feel like that, no, I'm just kidding. It's great. You know, did either of you play The Looker? I feel like I should mention the Looker because that game looked really funny. I saw some clips of it. I haven't, but friend in the show, Russ Freshdick, actually DM me about it when he heard that The Witness was Jason's bet game and he was like,

you guys got to check out The Looker. And then he sent me like 16 videos of it. And I was like, dude, I haven't even played The Witness yet. I'm not going to watch these videos. Right. What is the Looker? Can you explain this? It's a parody of The Witness. It's a, it's a witness like comedy game where it is very funny. It's sort of Stanley Parable-ish, like in that it's, it's a version of the witness where it's all kind of taking the piss out of the witness. Like it's making fun of it. But it is apparently very, very clever. I mean, I've only seen clips of it.

I have not played it. But I think Jason, since you've played all the way through the witness, I'd be very curious what you thought of it. I think I would wait to play it personally until I've played all the way through the witness, which is I know a wonderful game and you might win the bet, so I'm holding off. So now I'm in a kind of holding pattern. But I do want to mention that game because it came out pretty recently and is exactly the kind of thing we're talking about, where it's a very funny, it's funny on its own. It's funny because of the way you interact with it.

And it's funny because it's sort of deflating this very beautiful, thoughtful, you know, genius level puzzle game. Well, that, yeah, that sounds interesting. But look, man, I hadn't heard of it. Weird. It came out last year, apparently. It was a little under the radar. I heard of it a few times. Yeah, it's kind of rare to see a game that is itself specifically a parody,

either of a particular game or of a style of game. I mean, I suppose there are many games that just kind of parody games, all video games. But I think the Looker might be in its own category of extremely specific parody. Right. And I think the Looker also is, I think, very well made. But I think that is a remarkable thing about it is people play it and they think, oh, this is going to be a series of little jokes and then it'll end. And instead they're like, wow, this is kind of a really high effort thing that someone really smart made, you know, and turned into a whole thing. That's the sense that I've gotten about it. But not to spend too long in a game that none of us have played.

Yeah. But I'm sure there are some people listening being like, but what about the looker? How are you not played the lookers? Yeah. There you go. Another type of comedy that I want to mention before we wrap this up is just video games that I wouldn't necessarily think of as being funny as the point. But comedy is the main way that I remember them. So the Ace Attorney series is one of the best examples in my heart where I generally laugh a lot at those games.

But I would describe them first and foremost as mystery games. The Yakusa series, I don't have a ton of experience with, but another example of a series where most of the time, I mean, there are serious elements, but then there are very many goofy elements as well, usually in side quests and side stories. Kirkia. Can I jump in on Yakusa? I was going to mention Yakuza earlier. Those games are hilarious and in a wonderful and distinct way, and I think they're worth mentioning here because it's similar to some of the games we were talking about earlier, where what's funny about Yakuza is the way that it shifts tone so effortlessly

and manages to hold these completely contradictory tones right next to one another, where you're playing as, you know, this kind of hard crime guy who's out trying to make a name for himself and rise the ranks in organized crime. And then you'll wind up engaged in this sort of domestic drama at the whatever. I don't know, the laundromat because the guy who runs the laundromat needs you to help him. And there's a whole like laundromat mini game that you start playing. And it goes so far beyond just a mini game and becomes a whole epic saga where your character who is supposed to be off whatever, doing crime or like becoming more powerful. Yeah, instead is like totally like and it's played so straight in a very funny way.

You know, it's like really dramatic music and serious characters in the middle of what is a completely increasingly absurd situation. And that style of humor, it does it in a way that no other game really does and is constantly delightful and very, very funny. Yeah, it works really well. I mean, Ace Attorney might be a weird example to give to compare to Yakuza, but there are parts of it that remind me of that where because the characters are so serious and usually they're solving murders and therefore the idea of anything being. funny is kind of tragic, but that means that then any additional comedic layer, which is like wordplay in characters' names or absurd sitcom situations, it just is elevated because it's juxtaposed with the seriousness of solving or murder. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the characters are a little less serious than in a lot of other games, I would say. Right. Not quite as

as much scowling as in Yakuza, but there are still some of those juxtaposition. Yeah. And most of, most of the courtroom scenes is like Phoenix Wright getting whipped by people or like having coffee thrown at his face. But then also there's pathos there. Like you still also care about him and feel for him. Sure. And because there are those those more poignant moments where you're actually rooting for him, the comedy works so much better because you actually do want him to succeed and you care as opposed to just laughing at the entire situation as patently absurd and checking out entirely. That balance was struck really well, I thought, by the greatest attorney by both of those games.

So I think that that had a really good balance of comedy, ridiculousness, but also characters that I cared about and was happy to see when they returned. And in the end, like a kind of really grand story that I really liked. And I just, I liked all the characters and I wanted them to have happy endings. Totally. Well, I guess we'll leave it there. But before we take a break and do one more thing, I just want to say that watching every single line of dialogue from Duke Nukem on YouTube is also really funny. I'm not going to fight you.

I'm going to kick your ass. And I don't know that I recommend replaying any of those, but just hanging out listening to those. Okay. Just on their own. Noted. It's a good way to spend an afternoon. It's a good way to spend your time. I don't know whether anybody's ever going to circle back to Duke Nukem and figure out how to make those games funny in a real way.

I feel like the potential is there. I don't know. That's all. That's my hot tip for the listener. Hail to the king, baby. We'll see. We'll see. Watched up Duke Nukem who realized he said he's the terrible.

Some Duke Nukem one-liners, even though Duke has been canceled, unfortunately. We will take a little beat here. That would be a good, okay, that's the plot. Duke just got fired from his job as a video game protagonist. You know that that's going to be the plot of the next two-bukam game. Oh, no, I've wielded it into being. All right, we'll be back in just a second with one more thing. Hey there, it's Annabelle Gourwich.

And I'm Laura House. We host Tiny Victories, the 15-minute podcast that's, about the little things. Getting into the tiny victory frame of mine is about recognizing minor accomplishments and fleeting joys. Isn't it a wonderful day when the first password you try actually works?

When it's freezing cold outside and toasty as I'll get out in my shower, my tiny victory is that I turn off the water and get on with my day. We can't change this big, dumb world, but we can celebrate the tiny winds. So join us on Macon. maximum fun or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Let's get tiny. Jay Keith, do you know what I love more than the trivia, comedy, and celebrity guests on our podcast? GoFact Yourself? No, what, Ellen? Sharing all of those things with an actual audience. Yes, well, lucky for you. GoFact yourself is back to being a live audience show. Woo-hoo!

Yeah, we've got a free recording coming up on January 15th in Los Angeles and February 11th in Pasadena. And if you can't make it there, all of our recordings will still. be available as a podcast. Twice a month, every month on maximum fun.org. Yeah, no excuses. So if you're not listening, you can go fact yourself. We are back and each of us has one more thing to talk about, Kirk, why don't you go first? All right. My one more thing is a TV show that Emily and I just started watching that I really like and wanted to recommend to people because I bet some folks out there don't know of it. It's called detectorists. Are either of you aware of you? Never heard of it.

Never heard of it. That's why I called on you. I was like, what's this word? Detectorists. They explained in the first couple episodes. So this is a BBC for sitcom. So a British sitcom that premiered in 2014. It is written and directed by McKenzie Crook,

an actor that anyone who watched the British office, they'll be ringing a bell with them. He played Gareth, the sort of Dwight Shrewt equivalent on the British office, a kind of weasily kind of creepy dude. who is like the office creep a little bit and is very, very funny in that role but of course was playing a kind of bit as a character character actor.

And on this show, he is the main character along with Toby Jones, who, I don't know, people know from everything. He's a character actor who's in everything. He's in the Marvel movies. He plays, what's his name? Not Barron Zemo, but he's like the second in command to Red Skull.

He's like a kind of shorter guy, British, very funny. He puts himself into a computer in Captain America, the Winter Soldier, and comes back as a computer. You'd know him if you saw him. Anyways. So Toby Jones and McKenzie Crook play the two main characters who are guys who are detectorists in rural England, which means they take metal detectors and they go about metal detecting looking for old like archaeological finds or maybe valuables that they can sell.

This is, I think, a sort of a niche hobby in England. There's kind of a whole series of regulations around it because there's a lot of, you know, ancient Saxon, you know, artifacts that you can dig up. So that's the premise. And it's one of those very low-key, very British shows where it's just kind of like two guys who are kind of, you know, sad sack dudes going around with their metal detectors, never really finding anything, which is, of course, very metaphorical. And then it's also just about their lives. And the new people that they meet or the characters they interact with, many of whom are very silly and also kind of great characters. We've just started watching it. We're partway through the first season.

I believe it is over. I think there have been three seasons and a Christmas specialer. I think they just came back for one last Christmas special. This is won a bunch of awards. It's a very beloved show overseas, but I think it's a little less well known here. But it's really good. It's a different kind of vibe than a lot of TV in the way you can probably imagine. If you're picturing just sort of not sweeping beautiful shots of the English countryside,

but lovely sort of two guys in a field somewhere in England walking and, you know, metal detecting and talking about things and, you know, sort of getting on one another's nerves. and just being funny. So I'm really enjoying it. It's a nice change of pace. It's called The Detectorists. We're watching it on Prime, where you can just watch it for free. It's one of those free-vee things where there's commercials,

but you can watch it. I think you don't even need to have a Prime subscription. So maybe we're just watching it through the Amazon app. Anyways, I recommend it. I really like it. It's a good show. Cool. I'll go next because mine's also a TV show,

which is, Hey Arnold, Arnold, a children's television show. Yeah, I know this show. From the 90s and early 2000s. Great theme song. It does have a great theme song. So Dean and I have been watching a lot of children's television shows for the past six months. Just we'll watch one episode right before we fall asleep. We're becoming children.

No, no, no, no. I like how I went the other way with it because it's so unlikely that we'll ever have a child. Benjamin Buttoning. Yeah, no, we're both Benjamin Buttoning. No, I feel like this is like the least cool thing we've ever done, not because it's uncool to watch children's television shows, but because we'll watch them and then just hyper-analyze whatever. social themes and tragic events were happening in real life when the shows were made.

And like right now we're watching Doug and we're just analyzing like the racial politics of Doug because there's like blue people on that show and what does that mean? But Doug, I don't recommend. Hey Arnold has been my favorite of these that we've watched. And we've watched a ton of children's TV lately. And I was pleasantly surprised by Hey Arnold because I really only remembered one thing about it, which is that there's a female bully character, Helga, who has a crush on the protagonist Arnold, but can never reveal her love for him and instead teases him every single

time she sees him. And I always thought that was really charming and hilarious as a kid. And as an adult, I still think that, for one thing. And also, it's very rare to see a female bully in any context in television or media. And Helga is a delightful character. She ends up being pretty complex and fascinating in a lot of ways and has a lot going on. And I was just really pleasantly surprised by that. So I recommend, hey Arnold, if anyone I feel like female bullies were coming. I feel like female bullies are coming.

Angelica. No, no, no, no, no, no. On shows in the 90s. Angelica on Rugrats. Yeah. Angelica is a classic. I feel like there was another one that is not, maybe to salute your shirts. No, that was a male bully. I don't know. There was another one then.

Well, we've been doing Doug, which has a classic male bully. We just did Phineas and Ferb, which has, Candice, you could argue. is the bully, but there's really a male bully Buford who becomes a reformed bully later on. There's a lot of, there's a lot of bullies and leather jackets in these kinds of shows. Do you know what I mean? Like the evil greaser thing. Yeah, the evil greaser. He is everywhere. And Hey Arnold, Hey Arnold certainly has some evil greasers.

They're on there. They're in the mix. But Helga is really, really interesting. So yeah, I recommend it. It's great rewatch. Also watching kids TV right before you fall asleep. Pretty fun. Pretty perfect. Yeah, I could see that. Jason, what's your one more thing? All right. So my wife and I, I think we consider ourselves as pretentious as this place down to be foodies. We really like going to dining experiences. We really like going to fancy restaurants and tasting menus.

In fact, on our honeymoon a few years ago, we like decided deliberately, all right, we're going to stay at like cheaper hotels and spend all of our budget on food and go to all these restaurants with like tasting menus and stuff like that. which is why the new movie The Menu is a perfect, was a perfect watch for us, and we were both delighted and horrified by the movie. The Menu is a new movie starring Anna Joye Taylor and Ralph Fianess, Fiennus. Fiennes. Fines.

Raife Fines. There we go. Ray Fines. Thank you, Kirk. Thank you, Kirk. Rave Fines. Valdemort. It's starring Voldemort.

He's a chef now. We're not supposed to say his name. You know who. he should not be named as the chef of a fine dining restaurant, the type of dining restaurant that is $1,250 ahead and requires a boat to a private

island to go to and only sets like 13 dinners a night, that sort of thing. 12 diners a night. Yeah, Mandy, you just watched it too. I did, yeah. It just came to streaming. It just came to HBO. No major spoilers, because I haven't seen it, but I really want to watch it. But I'm excited to hear more about it.

It was in theaters in November and just came to HBO on Friday, which, by the way, loving this trend of movies coming to streaming like 60 days after release. Great. I know, I totally find an awkward to the movie theater. Anyway, we really enjoyed it. It's a very enjoyable experience and feels very true and real. And the premise is that Raff Feinness character, the chef. Close enough. We'll let it. Whatever. Anyway, Voldemort's character and the chef. You must, you must not pronounce his name. He will. Who is name must not be pronounced? Anyway, the premise of the menu is that all these rich people wind up going to this restaurant

and you see that you get to know them a little bit, this cast of characters. Some of them are there a couple of rich tech bros. There's like the restaurant critic and her like TOTE assistant. There's the old middle age couple that like has nothing to talk about except how the woman like saw someone the other day who they both know. There's John Leguizamo playing an aging movie star Who's done nothing but terrible comedies lately Sounds like a bunch of people I would hate for anything bad to happen to any of these people

As the dinner unfolds It's kind of the movie is structured in that Like there will be these kind of Chiron saying first course second course Etcetera etc Things start to go a little bit awry And so by the time you've gotten to the second course Which is a plate called breadless bread which is just kind of like dips for nothing on it, like for nothing.

Breadless bread plates. Very experimental dishes at this restaurant. It's just a bunch of dips with no bread to dip into them. You start to see things really go awry. And I won't really say what happens. Say no more. It's very funny. But it's extremely enjoyable.

We laughed the whole time. It is technically a horror thriller, but it's a very, very funny one. And it's light on the horror, I would say. So the movie really makes you think about. fine dining in some interesting ways. And it makes you think about the kind of the, I don't know, the sacrifices that it takes and what it does to people. And it's really interesting. It's one of those kind of like good comedy horror movie. There's no gore really. It's more of like a thriller type thing and leaves you thinking. I really enjoyed it. So I recommend it. The menu. It's a good movie.

It's on HBO Max now. Yeah. We liked it too. And I think it's also applicable to really any other art form. I would consider cooking an art form for starters. But, But anybody who has taken something like that extraordinarily seriously and either has mixed feelings about it or is annoyed at their audience or really any cocktail of those emotions and just wants to watch a movie that makes fun of those emotions in a biting way and also rich people. I don't know. I enjoyed it. I don't think it's that deep. It doesn't have to be. And Onion Taylor Joy, what a talent.

Also, Nicholas Holt plays a hilarious. Oh, nice. of hilariously, like, fanboyish of Ray Fine's character who is just incredible in the movie. Nice. He's, his character is so funny to me.

It's kind of the era of a bunch of terrible rich people go to an island movies, so. It is. You know, within the first five minutes, I turned to Dina and I was like, are we just watching Glass Onion again? Is this just Glass Onion?

What's happening right now? It sounds kind of like it is. And it is a little, it's also white lettuce. It is also white lettuce. I mean, it's like, but you know what?

That's okay. Still pretty funny as a premise. It's just the era that we're in. Is the rich people on an island era? Yeah, I'm looking forward to watching it. This movie sounds delightful. Yeah. So that's it.

We did another one, another episode. We did it. Look at that. Look at us. New year. New podcast. No, same podcast. New year.

We don't want to hear about them. Nope. Don't talk to us about them ever again. Not until the end of the year. And yeah, that's it. We'll see you both next week. Yep, see you next week. See you guys next week.

Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun podcast network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.

org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple click pod, send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned, audience supported.